20 M 392, 2020 WL 4931052, at *10 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 24, 2020) (quoting the governments search warrant applications). Dozens of civil liberties groups and privacy advocates have called for banning the technique, arguing it violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, particularly for protesters. Geofence warrants that allow law enforcement to collect location data on mobile device users for criminal probes are under attack by civil rights groups and public defenders; they say the warrants . at *7. ) and the possibility of the federal government scaling up such surveillance to identify every single person at a protest, regardless of whether or not they broke the law or any suspicion of wrongdoing raises core constitutional concerns.110110. At this time, fewer pedestrians would be around, and fewer individuals would be captured by the geofence warrant. While some explain this practice by pointing to the Stored Communications Act,5959. Plus: A leaked US no fly list, the SCOTUS leaker slips investigators, and PayPal gets stuffed. Rep. 807 (KB); and Money v. Leach (1765) 97 Eng. See generally Orin Kerr, Implementing Carpenter, in The Digital Fourth Amendment (forthcoming), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3301257 [https://perma.cc/BDR5-6P6T]. for Just., Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy 5 (2018), https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/Report_Cell_Surveillance_Privacy.pdf [https://perma.cc/Z6F7-XZYV]. 2017). That is because Apple doesn't store location data in a format . While all geofence warrants provide a search radius and time period, they otherwise vary greatly. According to the data, "Google received 982 geofence warrants in 2018, 8,396 in 2019 and 11,554 in 2020.". Id. And, as EFF has argued in amicus briefs, it violates the Fourth Amendment because it results in an overbroad fishing-expedition against unspecified targets, the majority of whom have no connection to any crime. In collaboration with The Nib and illustrator Chelsea Saunders, we've adapted "Coded Resistance" into comic form. While this initial list may include dozens of devices, police then use their own investigative tools to narrow the list of potential suspects or witnesses using video footage or witness statements. New iMac With 'iPad Pro Design Language'. . Jake Laperruque, Project on Government Oversight, Torn between the latest phones? Id. More Than Just Code podcast - iOS and Swift - podcasts.apple.com See Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 560 (2004); see also Orin S. Kerr, Ex Ante Regulation of Computer Search and Seizure, 96 Va. L. Rev. That Made Him a Suspect., NBC News (Mar. On the one hand, individuals have a right to be protected against rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy and from unfounded charges of crime.131131. At step one, Google must search all of its location information, including the additional information it produces during the back-and-forth at step two. On the iPhone it's called "Location Services". at 48081. Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419 (1969); see also United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 914 (1984); Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 236 (1983); United States v. Allen, 625 F.3d 830, 840 (5th Cir. Typically, a geofence warrant calls on Google to access its database of location information. 8$6m7]?{`p|}IZ%pVcn!9c69?+9T:lDhs%fFfA# a$@-qyKmE3 /6"E3J3Lk;Np. A warrant requesting accounts located within the geographical area bordered to the north at 26.947300, -80.357595, to the east at 26.94672, -80.356715, to the south at 26.946227, -80.357316, and to the west at 26.946762, -80.358073, for example, does not illustrate the scope of the requested search. Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 561 (2004). MetLife, Inc. v. Fin. While it is true that not everybody constantly carries their cell phone, and a cell phone is not always sending location information to Google,143143. Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers. 'Geofence warrant' unconstitutional, judge rules in Virginia - Police1 Id. 20 M 525, 2020 WL 6343084, at *6 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 29, 2020). First, officers had established the existence of coconspirators using traditional surveillance tools.155155. Id. First, because it has no way of knowing which accounts will produce responsive data, Google searches the entirety of Sensorvault, its location history database,6969. 531, 551 (2005) (emphasis added). Id. The Virginia Geofence Warrant. . Application for Search Warrant, supra note 174. Here's another rejection covered by Techdirt this one arriving nearly a year ago . Third, and finally, Google provides account-identifying information, such as the first names, last names, and email addresses of the users.7676. Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants are So Invasive, Even Although these warrants have been used since 2016 26 26. and gives officials fair leeway for enforcing the law in the communitys protection.135135. Google handed over the GPS coordinates and data, device data, device IDs, and time stamps for anyone at the library for a period of two hours; at the museum, for 25 minutes. Few are as fortunate as McCoy, who at least was informed and had the opportunity to block the request in court. But see, e.g., Orin Kerr, Why Courts Should Not Quantify Probable Cause, in The Political Heart of Criminal Procedure: Essays on Themes of William J. Stuntz 131, 13132 (Michael Klarman, David Skeel & Carol Steiker eds., 2012). A geofence warrant is a type of search warrant that law enforcement typically use when they do not have a suspect. There has been a dramatic increase in the use of geofence warrants by law enforcement in the U.S. Across all 50 states, geofence requests to Google increased from 941 in 2018 to 11,033 in 2020, accounting for a significant portion of all requests the company receives from law enforcement. .); Google Amicus Brief, supra note 11, at 14 (To produce a particular users CSLI, a cellular provider must search its records only for information concerning that particular users mobile device.). 2015). Judges do not consistently engage in the informed and deliberate decisionmaking that the Fourth Amendment contemplated. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2217 (2018); Riley, 573 U.S. at 385. Though admittedly an open question, Google has advocated that they are,2828. During the protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, for example, companies collected and sold protesters phone data to political groups for election-related use,107107. Geofence and reverse keyword warrants are some of the most dangerous, civil-liberties-infringing and reviled tools in law enforcement agencies digital toolbox. In response to two FBI requests, for example, Google produced 1,494 accounts at step two.172172. Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 221718 (2018); Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 38586 (2014); see, e.g., Arson, No. In Ohio, requests rose from seven to 400 in that same time. Thanks, you're awesome! Surveillance Applications & Ords., 964 F.3d 1121, 1129 (D.C. Cir. L. Rev. See Jon Schuppe, Google Tracked His Bike Ride Past a Burglarized Home. In 2018, Google received 982 geofence warrants from law enforcement; in 2020 that number surged to 11,554, according to the most recent data provided by the company. Because the search area was broad and thus vague, a warrant would merely invite[] the officers to roam the length of [the street]117117. Often, warrants remain sealed and criminal defendants never find out that these warrants played a role in their convictions. L. Rev. 1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364, 371 (2009) (citations omitted) (quoting Gates, 462 U.S. at 238, 244 n.13); see also Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 735 (1983) (plurality opinion). Similarly, with a. , police compel the company to hand over the identities of anyone who may have searched for a specific term, such as a victims name or a particular address where a crime has occurred. Google Amicus Brief, supra note 11, at 45. "We vigorously protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement, Google said in a statement to WIRED. Eighty-one percent have smartphones. at 221718; Jones, 565 U.S. at 429 (Alito, J., concurring); id. Around 5 p.m. on May 20, 2019, a man with a gun robbed a bank near Richmond, Virginia, escaping with $195,000. Representative Kelly Armstrong suggested that geofence warrants should be considered contents within the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), Pub. Mar. Berkeley Technology Law Journal Podcast: Geofence Warrants - Cell Phone Time and Place. Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 220 (1981). Usually, officers identify a suspect or person of interest, then obtain a warrant from a judge to search the persons home or belongings. 18-mj-00169 (W.D. 7, 2020, 6:22 AM), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 [https://perma.cc/73TP-KBXR]. Cops have discovered Google houses plenty of location data. 2018); United States v. Saemisch, 371 F. Supp. In the statement released by the companies, they write that, This bill, if passed into law, would be the first of its kind to address the increasing use of law enforcement requests that, instead of relying on individual suspicion, request data pertaining to individuals who may have been in a specific vicinity or used a certain search term. This is an undoubtedly positive step for companies that have a checkered history of being cavalier with users' data and enabling large-scale government surveillance. The three tech giants have issued a. ,'' that they will support a bill before the New York State legislature. See United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 402 (2012); United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705, 709, 717 (1984). No. Id. There is a simple answer and it's this: just disable "Location" tracking in the settings on the phone. This understanding is consistent only with treating step one as the search.8888. Letting police access Google location data can help solve crimes Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment - Harvard Law Review In re Search Warrant Application for Geofence Location Data Stored at Google Concerning an Arson Investigation (Arson)150150. With permission from a judge, they allow law enforcement to obtain anonymized data from Google from almost any device that was in a certain geographic . In addition, he and his companies must modify their stalkerware to alert victims that their devices have been compromised. Id. Law enforcement has increasingly relied on technology companies to provide information about individual suspects to aid their investigations, sometimes voluntarily but most often in response to court orders.4040. imposes a heavier responsibility on this Court in its supervision of the fairness of procedures. (quoting Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 329 n.7 (1966))); cf. But lawyers for Rhine, a Washington man accused of various federal crimes on January 6, recently filed a motion to . The three stage warrant process is based on an agreement between Google and the Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual . Now Its Paused, The Biggest US Surveillance Program You Didnt Know About. Critics noted that such a bill could penalize anyone attending peaceful demonstrations that, because of someone elses actions, become violent. For an overview of deference to police knowledge, see generally Anna Lvovsky, The Judicial Presumption of Police Expertise, 130 Harv. Apple, Uber, and Snapchat have . how can probable cause to search a store located in a seventy-story skyscraper possibly extend to all the other places in the building? It is, however, unclear how Google determines whether a request is overly broad. and has developed a [three]-step anonymization and narrowing protocol for when it does respond to them.6868. Smith, The Carpenter Chronicle: A Near-Perfect Surveillance, 132 Harv. After pressure from activists, Google revealed in a press release last week that it had granted geofence warrants to U.S. police over 20,000 times in the past three years. (1763) 98 Eng. In others, police have targeted the wrong man, or retrieved data on more than 1,000 phones going through the area, raising concerns about how innocent people can be affected by such warrants. % While probable cause forces the government to prove that the need to search is greater than any invasion of privacy,133133. . Publicly, Google is the only tech company that releases information to law enforcement agents in response to geofence warrants. However, while a security camera is fixed at a single known location and its view cannot further be expanded after a recording, geofence warrants allow officers to look for suspects in any place in the world that receives cell service. for Just., Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761, https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/764-fdlelocationsearch/d448fe5dbad9f5720cd3/optimized/full.pdf, https://www.wral.com/scene-of-a-crime-raleigh-police-search-google-accounts-as-part-of-downtown-fire-probe/17340984, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/07/google-location-police-search-warrants, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-location-data-avondale-wrongful-arrest-molina-gaeta-11426374, https://www.cnet.com/news/geofence-warrants-how-police-can-use-protesters-phones-against-them, https://www.wired.com/story/creepy-geofence-finds-anyone-near-crime-scene, https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/10/23/feds-are-ordering-google-to-hand-over-a-load-of-innocent-peoples-locations, https://gothamist.com/news/manhattan-da-got-innocent-peoples-google-phone-data-through-a-reverse-location-search-warrant, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/us/politics/trump-proud-boys-capitol-riot.html, https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/20836855/reverse-location-search-warrant-dragnet-bank-robbery-fbi, https://www.thedailybeast.com/manhattan-da-cy-vance-made-google-give-up-info-on-everyone-in-area-in-hunt-for-antifa-after-proud-boys-fight, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-location-tracking-police.html, https://www.apnews.com/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb, https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3301257, https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/information-requests.html, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law-enforcement-requests-report, https://www.uber.com/us/en/about/reports/law-enforcement, https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview, https://www.statista.com/statistics/232786/forecast-of-andrioid-users-in-the-us, https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os, https://themanifest.com/mobile-apps/popularity-google-maps-trends-navigation-apps-2018, https://www.fastcompany.com/90452990/this-unsettling-practice-turns-your-phone-into-a-tracking-device-for-the-government, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/21/bank-robber-accuses-police-illegally-using-google-location-data-catch-him, https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/12/11/google-gives-feds-1500-leads-to-arsonist-smartphones-in-unprecedented-geofence-search, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-political-groups-are-harvesting-data-from-protesters-11592156142, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-floyd-police-brutality-protests-government, https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/06/minneapolis-protests-geofence-warrant, https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/03/19/police-are-casting-a-wide-net-into-the-deep-pool-of-google-user-location-data-to-solve-crimes, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3519211-Edina-Police-Google-Search-Warrant-Redacted.html, https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2009/08-1332.pdf, https://www.c-span.org/video/?474236-1/heads-facebook-amazon-apple-google-testify-antitrust-law, https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/Report_Cell_Surveillance_Privacy.pdf, https://www.cnet.com/news/google-is-giving-data-to-police-based-on-search-keywords-court-docs-show. Similarly, geofence warrants in Florida leaped from 81 requests in 2018 to more than 800 last year. It also means that with one document, companies would be compelled to turn over identifying information on every phone that appeared in the vicinity of a protest, as happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin during a protest against police violence. The "geofence" is the boundary of the area where the criminal activity occurred, and is drawn by the government using geolocation coordinates on a map attached to the warrant. Execs. Assn, 489 U.S. 602, 614 (1989). Geofence warrants seek location data on every person within a specific location over a certain period of time. Their increasingly common use means that anyone whose commute takes them goes by the scene of a crime might suddenly become vulnerable to suspicion, surveillance, and harassment by police. Check your Apple warranty status. A geofence warrant is a warrant that goes to any company capable of tracking your location data through your cellphone. But they can do even more than support legislation in one state. Safford Unified Sch. In listing the things to be seized, a warrant must list all the data that law enforcement intends to collect throughout the entirety of Googles process, which includes, at least, the latitude/longitude coordinates and timestamp of the reported location information of each device identified by Google in step one.173173. R. Crim. 19. Instead, it is enough if the description is such that the officer with a search warrant can with reasonable effort and presumably relying on expertise and experience ascertain and identify the place intended.162162. They are paradigmatic dragnets that run[] against everyone.104104. The cellphone dragnet called a geofence warrant harvests the location history generated by users of electronic devices that is stored by Google in a vast repository known as Sensorvault. A person does notand should notsurrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.187187. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.